Here's 10 minutes of new Kingdom Hearts 3 gameplay
Kingdom Hearts 3 is a real video game that actually exists and is playable, and we've got the video footage to prove it.
Remember E3 2013? It feels like a lifetime ago now. Alongside stuff like The Order 1886, Battlefield 4, Final Fantasy 15 and Halo 5 was Kingdom Hearts 3. Five years on, Kingdom Hearts 3 was beginning to feel like one of those games that was never going to come out - but Square Enix is finally done keeping us waiting. I actually got to play it for well over an hour.
As you can read in my lengthy Kingdom Hearts 3 hands-on preview, the game looks and feels pretty impressive - it really feels like a significant step up for the series. And now, if you want, you can see that with your own eager eyeballs:
Kingdom Hearts 3 is significant for a few reasons. First of all, it's the first numbered, main-line entry in the series in over a decade. It's a significant story continuation for fans, too. But most importantly, it sees Square Enix get their hands on a significantly larger portion of the Disney estate for their mad cross-over, mash-up dreams.
While it looks like the LucasFilm and Marvel empires will remain off-limits for Kingdom Hearts, what it does mean for this game is that for the first time we'll see Kingdom Hearts explore CG animated films from both Disney Animation Studios (Disney's Wreck it Ralph shows up in this footage as a summonable ally) and from the much-loved stable of movies from Pixar.
From the latter we already know that Monsters Inc and Toy Story will be represented in the game, and a good chunk of this hands-on footage comes from the Toybox level of KH3 that's based on the original Toy Story. The Pixar collaboration sounds like it's been a lot of work, but the visuals and resemblance to the original movies speak for themselves.
Kingdom Hearts 3 will be out some time in 2018, though Square Enix hasn't confirmed an exact date just yet. The publisher has confirmed that more news for the game will be coming next month - and Square Enix has an E3 2018 presentation coming early in June, so for more news and probably a release date you should tune in to that.